The best and most important lesson that I have taken from this year is to trust your instinct.

Going into 2019, whether you want to change your home, go that different route to work or ring someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. Do it. That feeling telling you to do something, is doing it for a reason.

Where does it come from? Your gut? Your heart?

For me, I have finished the year feeling very aligned and synchronised with the world. Little things now happen regularly, such as; I think about someone then they call, or I look down at the time and it is showing 22:22. It may sound silly to some, but it has happened to me a silly amount of times every day for the past two months.

When I see something like this happen, I smile, sometimes laugh and give it some present attention. In my opinion, signs like this are life telling me that I am on the right path, and that I should keep going.

Your instinct and its power

Every day, humans make thousands of decisions so they can get through a productive day. Also, whether you believe it or not, a depressed or anxious person’s brain does exactly the same! (perhaps not the most productive decisions however)

Life is about making decisions about your direction, like taking the chance to learn something new or starting a business. However, often people can get stuck into thinking that it might not succeed because they are too afraid of failure.

Failure is what drives success. Behind every successful person (in whatever you define as success, for me it is happiness) there is a string of failures. Those failures have been initiated by that person’s instinct telling them to try something.

My biggest failures of 2018 would be:

Not getting onto a masters course

This lead to me volunteering at the LGBT Foundation which has been a massive addition to my quality of life

Failing in making a new kind of relationship work

This increased my own self confidence

Working for too long at home in a job, making me very socially anxious and depressed

The last one is the most interesting for me, as it is when I started to trust my instinct the most. I walked into the office of my last job at the start of this year, feeling awful and socially awkward. Out of nowhere, my instinct said to me “hand in your notice”, and so I did!

Without telling anyone (not even my partner) or making any plans, I left my job purely based on a feeling inside. Sounded crazy back then, but what a fantastic decision that was!

Think about your instinct in 2019, it is your best and most honest guide.